A call from the commissioner
by John Berry
Setting the stage.
Oct. 15, 1920.
The distinctive “candlestick” phone rings.
R-r-r-r-ing, R-r-r-r-ing.
“Hello.”
“Mr. George Herman Ruth?”
“Yes.”
“This is Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.”
“Commissioner Landis, what a surprise. What can I do for you?”
“Well, George, I got some bad news for you.
“You hit 54 homers last season and the next one in line, George Sisler, only hit 19.
“And the top 10 on the home run list stopped at 11.
“Anything you’d like to say about that?”
“Well, Judge, and you can call me ‘Babe,’ I had a pretty good year and looking forward to the next one.”
“Well, Babe, a lot of the other teams have called me and they don’t want you to play on their field next season.
“They feel that you had to have done something that may have been, shall we say, not on the ‘up and up’ to hit 54 homers.
“Do you take any special medications that we can look into?”
“Why are you asking me these questions, Judge. You know me better than that!”
“Well, Babe, I was voted in as the first-ever Baseball commissioner to restore integrity to the game of baseball after the Black Sox scandal, so I’m just checking into how you achieved such lofty home run totals.”
“Well Judge, just maybe, I am that good at the game.
“I homered off of around 35 pitchers: Dickey Kerr, Carl Mays, Dutch Leonard, and Bullet Joe Rush.”
“Oh, I believe ya, Babe, I believe ya.”
“So, you’re telling me what?”
“I’m telling you that you can play in your home ballpark — we can’t stop you doing that — but you can no longer travel for games against the Athletics, Indians, Browns, Red Sox, White Sox, Indians, and Senators.”
Sound a bit ludicrous? Thankfully, this never happened.
And the “Babe” went on to even greater heights with seasons featuring 59 and 60 home runs, 729 in total including 15 in world series competition.
Babe Ruth became a legend then, and is still a legend today.
He’s not the only one in sports to achieve lofty and questionable statistics: Tom Brady, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, and LeBron James are just a handful of others.
Greatness can provide more questions than answers when all is said and done, but everyone deserves due process, the legal requirement that an individual must be given a fair and adequate legal procedure before being deprived of life, liberty or property.
It’s set in stone in our 14th Amendment.
While, in a perfect world, everyone in question should get due process, we must face the realization that harness racing is a “horse of a different color,” so to speak.
And that brings us to the beginning of this saga. It was Sept. 13, 2025, the closing session at Eldorado Scioto Downs.
It’s no secret that Dan Noble caused some red flags to fly as his stable went four-for-four with his horses stopping the timer in 1:46.4, 1:47, 1:47, and 1:47.2.
It was stated that all of these horses had a “license” for greatness as all were purchases with price tags between $100,000 and $300,000.
Maybe yes, maybe no.
No matter the price of a $500,000 yearling at the sales or a $5,000 one, one never knows until they hit the racetrack in competition, either they have it, or they don’t.
Same thing is true for a veteran claimer, or an import from Down Under. You never know.
Had his quartet won in 1:49 or 1:50, none of this hoopla would have followed.
Anyhow, shortly thereafter, the fictional Babe Ruth story shown at the beginning of this Mane Attraction became reality for Dan and Christie Noble.
Dan was denied participating at Dayton Raceway, where he was leading catch driver in 2025, and it appears that Scioto Downs will also deny privileges when they open their doors for 2026. Furthermore, Kentucky tracks may close their doors to him, as well.
While we hope that everyone has due process, it stretches that process, especially when, just a couple of columns ago, our Mane Attraction column focused on “The other wall of silence.”
There is absolutely no doubt about the great driving talent of Dan Noble. He approaches 9,000 lifetime wins worth well over $70 million to the trainers and owners for whom he has driven — that’s $70 million keeping owners investing in harness racing.
Yes, on closing night at Scioto, he posted training results — four of them — that are tough to swallow and, when tracks are privately owned, they can exercise their rights to ban anyone to insure their integrity to the public, and, yes, this is still considered a spectator sport.
Furthermore, due process might be denied until the matter goes to the courts.
What makes this case even more complex is the fact that our industry is SCREAMING about nothing being done to curtail what appears to be a serious problem regarding the sport’s integrity.
We aren’t alone in this problem as many sports have the same problems, and some involve the very officials that are in charge of watching over things to make the “calls.”
“Wherever there’s a buck or two in play,” said one bettor, “one never knows whether a call will be in your favor or against you.
“Point shaving, penalties, over-under props… you name it, if there is money on the line, there’s always somebody that will make a questionable call if he’s on the take.”
But, back on track.
Dan Noble now is forced to ply his trade at one track, Northfield Park (NFLD) and, yes, he has transformed the landscape there with 78 wins in January alone — a winning percentage of 36.6 per cent, rare heights on any racetrack.
He has had a very positive impact at NFLD on two of our most important commodities in our sport — trainers and owners.
In the first three weeks of this new year, he has won races for 30 different trainers and countless owners, keeping their heads above financial drowning.
But public opinion from our fans and BDHC (Broken Down Horseplayers Club) members has not had a positive reaction to what happened at Scioto Downs as their meeting closed, and public opinion is the most important aspect in keeping our sport alive.
Wherever he is allowed to compete, Dan now has to ply his trade as a catch driver and earn the trust to provide trainers and owners with his commitment to excellence on the track.
Received were comments that no explanation has been given for Dan to be denied access to some tracks — and that is a private track’s right — but, on the other side of the coin, Dan, himself, has been silent about that September evening at Scioto Downs.
If a name has the title judge at the beginning, in a perfect world, due process would be given to the person in question, and that would include testimony from both sides of the fence.
We should all assume innocent until proven guilty but, as one of the BDHC gang uttered, “If I have my $2 bucks — or $100 — bet on some horse’s nose, I look at it the other way.
“In horse racing where money is the only king, innocence must be the thing proven in this day and age.
“I could care less about a $2 million race. It does nothing for me.
“I do care about the ‘finski’ or ‘sawbuck’ I bet in the fifth at The Meadowlands.”
So, two things have to happen to straighten this stuff out once and for all.
One, Dan Noble must prove his character that he has built over the past quarter century (and that has slipped away as quickly as that 1:46.4 mile) and not remain silent as issues like this loom large as our sport loses fans and credibility one-by-one, nose-by-nose.
Two, this should be another wake-up call for the entire industry that we need our own Kenesaw Mountain Landis to serve as commissioner for what we would like to believe is a major sport.
This includes today’s casino surveillance methods and a team supporting the technology available today for comprehensive testing of medication and DNA.
Said one driver, “All of us ‘blow’ when we get to the paddock to make sure we are good to go and maybe the same should be the rule for all horses.
“I don’t know how that would be done but I’m sure it would be possible in today’s world.”
Cheaters cheat because the odds of being caught are so far above the “99” shown on a tote board that the reward is far greater than the risk of getting caught.
Our industry has failed to keep up with the evolution of medication, which has progressed from herbs and plants in Egypt and China centuries ago to scientifically engineered meds — some of which have gotten our equine industry into this mess.
Personally, I hope Dan Noble will step up to the plate, hit a homer, and prove his innocence.
That would be the Noble thing to do.
May The Horse Be With You!
